Xiaomi Mi 10 5G review

Main camera quality

Like we already mentioned, the main 108MP camera is, pretty-much, the only bit of the Mi 10 Pro's excellent camera setup carried over to the vanilla Mi 10. The only thing it really lost in the process is the Laser autofocus. Not a major loss, since the PDAF only failed us on vary rare occasion, while digitally zooming in imperfect lighting conditions.

In case you skipped-over the previous page, we will also quickly clarify a few things about the 108MP Samsung Bright S5KHMX camera, on the Mi 10. While it is very similar to Samsung's 108MP solution, as found in the S20 Ultra, it uses a Quad-Bayer filter instead of Nona technology. That means that you get a much more standard four pixel-binning scheme. While that theoretically should work out to 27MP stills and in fact, does so on the Mi Note 10, both the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro actually save 5792 x 4344px shots. Or around 25MP.

As per our usual review process, we started by taking the Mi 10 outside on a nice and sunny day. Unsurprisingly, just like its Pro sibling, the Mi 10 makes great use of its potent main camera. Shots come out with abundant detail, excellent dynamic range, and very mature color science. Noise can occasionally creep-up in uniform sports in the frame, like the sky and grass. But, overall, it is kept well at bay.

Xiaomi Mi 10 main camera 25MP samples

All of the above shots were taken in "full-auto" mode, for the lack of a better term, and give us little reason to complain. That includes HDR on auto. Just like the Mi 10 Pro, though, the Mi 10 never actually decided to enable HDR by itself. Granted, the lighting conditions didn't actually necessitate it. So, here are the same shots, taken with HDR forced ON.

Xiaomi Mi 10 main camera HDR ON samples

Not saying that we would necessarily recommend it, since using HDR when it is not needed can lead to some overexposure as well as, oversharpening, more noise and excessive colors.

If you really want to help your shots look consistently better, manual HDR is definitely not the way to go. The only thing we would really recommend enabling, which is oddly off, out of the box, and that's the Ai toggle in the camera.

Xiaomi Mi 10 main camera Ai ON samples

Once turned on, you can see it working hard behind the scenes, as indicated by its constantly shifting icon. There are plenty of scenes it can automatically pick-up and apply little tweaks for. The most straightforward ones being skylines and buildings. We managed to trigger two different "building" modes while testing the Mi 10 - one when shooting from far away and the other while capturing one of our odder angles, standing close to the building, and pointing the phone almost vertically up. While we can't really be sure what the differences in applied settings tweaks between the two are, we appreciated seeing an icon of the Eifel tower, instead of one showing a distant skyscraper. The system is pretty smart, is what we are getting at, and we definitely liked the extra "pop" in the shots it produces. Blues seem to get a particularly noticeably boost. If these are to your liking as well, be sure always to have Ai on. If nothing else, it does a bang-up job detecting sub-optimal lighting conditions and offering and doing a slightly longer exposure.

Shooting in 108MP is possible. The photos look okay but are noisy and not that detailed. Downscaling a 108MP photo to 25MP will not yield better results in most, if not all, cases. And mind you, when shooting in 108MP, the phone takes significantly longer to save the image, and they are about 30MB in size. 25MP is more than enough, better use that one.

Xiaomi Mi 10 main camera 108MP samples

This seems like a good place to put a link to our photo compare tool. This is the setup in which the Mi 10 shines the most, anyway and we can see it holding its own, thanks to the capable 108MP snapper, with a large sensor and bright aperture.

Mi 10 against the Mi 10 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy A50 in our Photo compare tool

Dedicated 2MP macro camera quality

We have to admit that we initially went into the camera tests for the Mi 10 review thinking, at the back of our heads, that including a 2MP dedicated macro snapper was kind of a disappointing "cop-out" on Xiaomi's part. A bid, of sorts, to compensate the downgrade in the ultrawide, which in the Mi 10 lacks an autofocus features and is, hence, no good for macros.

Ultrawide failing to do macro shots

We did try, anyway, just to prove our point. Shortly after, however, we remembered that the ultrawide on the Mi 10 Pro, we were initially reminiscing about, frankly did a pretty poor job at macro shots in our review. On the flip side, while on paper, the 2MP, f/2.4 macro camera on the Mi 10 sounds quite pitiful, we found it to produce surprisingly pleasant results.

Xiaomi Mi 10 2MP macro camera samples

The Macro cam does not sound like much but its claim to fame is the fact that it does have autofocus. Its minimum focus distance is so short, that we nearly bumped the phone against some of our subjects during testing. And, of course, 1600 x 1200 pixel shots are clearly a downside. But, unless you actually plan on printing some of these out in anything bigger than passport size, the shots are, honestly, perfectly usable. Especially for social media, where they are likely to end up anyway.

Xiaomi Mi 10 2MP macro camera samples

We would also be remiss if we didn't mention that the main 108MP camera on the Mi 10 is huge in resolution, but also physically large. And larger sensors do offer a shallower depth of field, which is desirable for subject isolation. Couple that with the bright f/1.69 lens, and the camera starts to offer some pretty impressive natural bokeh. As far as phone cameras go. This is also a great way to go for macro shots.

Nice bokeh effect with the main 108MP camera

Ultrawide camera quality

The vanilla Mi 10 skips out on the 20MP ultrawide of its Pro sibling, settling instead for a more basic 13MP unit. We already mentioned its lack of autofocus. However, we are definitely less happy about the reduction in lens aperture down to f/2.4. A reality that will become a lot more apparent in the low-light section on the following page.

Xiaomi Mi 10 13MP ultrawide camera samples

On a good sunny day, however, the ultrawide on the Mi 10 does its main task of capturing more of the scene pretty well. It's a bit more softness than we would have liked, especially towards the edges.

Dynamic range could use some work. As far as positives go, the amount of detail is quite nice, and color processing is mature. Distortion correction gets a solid B+ as well.

2x zoom quality

.

Despite lacking a dedicated telephoto camera, the Mi 10 is still, pretty capable at zooming. The default preset of 2x, in particular, looks very competent. The phone appears to pull this off via cropping from the main 108MP sensor. The resulting shots end up with a 25MP resolution, as well and a mathematically accurate, even if not easily verifiable focal length of 48mm.

Xiaomi Mi 10 2x zoom camera samples

Like we already mentioned, this is another great showing from the 108MP sensor. The detail is on point, so is noise. Color science and processing are, understandably, identical between zoomed and 1x shots. One of the benefits using a single sensor and not having to worry about tweaking processing across different hardware.

We really can't find anything major to complain about here. Same goes for low-light performance. But you can check that out on the next page.

Camera samples: 25MP main • HDR ON • AI ON • 108MP • ultrawide • 2x zoom

Here is a complete set of shots, as detailed in the text above, from one of the scenes we shot, but haven't really showcased much so far. Just to have everything in one convenient location.

Portrait and studio lighting shots

As you can probably imagine, the main 108MP snapper on the Mi 10 remains consistently impressive while capturing human subjects, as well. In fact, even without playing with any specific beauty filters or portrait modes, its big size and bright lens work great for more dramatic shots, with a bit more depth of field.

Xiaomi Mi 10 main camera samples without portrait mode

Portrait mode takes things to the next level. Thanks to that additional 2MP depth module, the Mi 10 has very little issues with proper subject separation. Cranking up the dials on the background blur effect after that makes for some even more dramatic shots.

Xiaomi Mi 10 Portrait mode samples

But blur controls are just the tip of the iceberg here. Xiaomi has packed the Studio lighting section of Portrait mode full in interesting lighting effect.

Xiaomi Mi 10 Studio lighting effects

You have things ranging from tasteful black and white all the way to full-on rainbow effects. If it's your cup of tea, we won't judge.